October 4, 2002

NYT ADDENDA:  There is a position, espoused by Ain’t It Cool and others that the NY Times was played in their piece on Superman.  I have asked for specifics and no one seems to be able to cough any up.  There have been vague references to the WB story that Alan Horn distributed the JJ Abrams script to “10 Warner executives to read, including representatives from international and domestic theatrical marketing, consumer products and home video.”  I thought that was spin from the time I read it… but the Laura Holson story is not shy about letting everyone get his or her spin in. 

As I wrote in my look at the story, I think that the NYT being the NYT, soft-pedals some of the more intense ugliness.  There is a great story to be written about the ugliness between Alan Horn and Lorenzo di Bonaventura that will probably be written by Kim Masters or Amy Wallace one of these days.  But it wasn’t dominant in the NYT story on Superman. 

I think that anyone who suggests that Holson has taken any side in her story is taking a side.  The studio’s decision on which movie to make is written up as capricious, at best.  Joe Roth derides the idea of a trilogy as creating a “consumer products business.”  “The whole company,” was said to have, “rallied behind Alan (Horn).”  But Horn also eats his share of excrement over Pluto Nash. 

Di Bonaventura is also given a strong voice… he felt, according to the story, that Superman vs. Batman would reintroduce the characters before starting a new franchise, spearheaded by Abrams’ Superman script and obviously - though unmentioned in the article – Darren Aronofsky’s Batman: Year One.  And Horn was the autocrat who made the call, whether Lorenzo liked it or not.

The suggestion has also been made that Jon Peters was made out to be a hero in the story, crying because his film was going to be made.  But the story makes clear that his heroics are all self-serving.  The only heroic action to me was that Peters was willing to give up what I consider a humiliating quote: “"I knew in my heart if I failed again — this was eight years for me — it wouldn't be good.  You are going to think I'm crazy but I swear I heard the flapping of angel wings when Alan was talking."  Not crazy, but definitely a little desperate. 

JJ ADDENDA:  I was sickened to see ABC hyping Alias by selling the hype around Jennifer Garner.  The TV spot I saw mentioned how many magazine covers she had been on this summer, her Golden Globe and that she was so hot that TV Guide had to devote three different covers to her.

Geez, TV Guide will devote five different covers to each of James Gandolfini’s chins these days!  But more to the point, publicity based on a show’s ability to get publicity?  Jane!!!! How do I get off this crazy thing?!??!!?

NEW TIMES LOS ANGELES:  Disgusting. 

This is not going to be of much interest to anyone who doesn’t live in L.A., so I will keep it brief.  A media company that publishes alternative weeklies made a deal with another company that publishes alternative weeklies so each would dump a paper in one of two cities.  L.A. lost the New Times and Cleveland lost the Free Times. 

Even worse, as with roughcut.com, the powers-that-be decided to make the archives of each paper disappear into the ether, penalizing the writing staff of both papers cruelly.  I have to take some responsibility for the roughcut debacle, as a private e-mail of mine got into the press and drew the attention of the corporate knives.  But the staffs of the New Times L.A. and Cleveland Free Times were knocked off the pages of the web with nary a cigarette. 

The biggest issue, however, is the consolidation of thought.  New Times LA was not profitable and my bet is that Owner/Executive Editor Michael Lacey saw an opportunity to dump a profit-drain that he wasn’t sure would ever recover and to strengthen a position in another territory, recovering something of value from his inevitable shut-down.  Well, I’m not so sure that it was inevitable.  I have always felt that New Times LA was a paper that did what it did well brilliantly, but that it didn’t quite understand this market.  The money is on the west side and they are interested in bad cops, bad politicians and bad priests… but they don’t want to obsess on that diet.  Mark Ebner is a wacko, but he wrote the kind of inflammatory Hollywood stories that people “must” read.  The slot for an industry column has long been vacant… perhaps because the chain syndicates many of its features to al its cities and Hollywood is not as important in Phoenix as in L.A.  But that’s all about how you write the column.  Indie publicists have long fretted about the paper’s limited attention to indies… a problem that also seems to have come from the top.  The paper always did a good job on food and music, but television barely existed.  And, most of all, except for The Finger (aka Rick Barrs) and Jill Stewart, no one at New Times L.A. was really allowed a clear, memorable voice.  And to me, that’s how you build your readership. 

I said I was going to keep it brief…. L.A. now has one major paper (with due respect to the valley-based Daily News) and one major alt weekly.  New York has four dailies and three major alt weeklies and a whole lot more.  Chicago has two dailies and two major alt weeklies… although New City is teetering near the edge of local bankruptcy. 

Fewer voices… not good.

(The L.A. Times’ Scott Timberg remembers his days at New Times… good read… here.

DING, DONG… COULD IT BE?:  This was the third straight week without a column from Nikki Finke in the L.A. Weekly.  This week also marks the first time that the paper has run negative letters about Finke’s work… letters from a column on S.A.G. that ran a month ago. 

I never got to smack Finke around for her last stupid column, where she arrogantly attacked HBO for drawing more attention than viewers to The Sopranos, et al, while disregarding the history of both TV and film.  The Fox network was built on shows that rarely got into the Top 30, but got lots of press attention.  That has been the standard every since, manifested (along with black programming) at the WB and UPN.  Likewise, the hype around films like Memento and Croupier was way out of proportion to any box office success… which I like, but must be mentioned. 

Also, though I love Larry David, he could not have taken Curb Your Enthusiasm anywhere except for HBO or Showtime.  No one else has the right demo and the freedom  to feel like they’ve got a hit with these ratings.  More importantly, ten to twenty episodes a year is just about perfect for Larry, who was ready to walk off of Seinfeld – a show for which he deserves 90 percent of the credit – after three seasons.  Why would the show want to compete with Will & Grace?  Syndication money.  But Larry David has more money than God and he can now afford to do what he has always done… exactly what he wants to do

Finally, the success of niche programming on cable is best defined this year by the success of The Dead Zone and Monk, not ratings games around The Sopranos.  And certainly not by an off-topic attack on what some actor - who obviously tests well or he wouldn’t keep getting jobs, you goof - looks like. 

For the first time ever, a cable series has become a network winner… even with the network run following the cable run.  That’s an important story.  Why did HBO dump Dennis Miller, the last political comedy on TV other than The Daily Show?  That’s an important story.

Maybe someone at the LA Weekly realized that another agent-friend-driven story about how mean ole CBS wasn’t willing to cough up huge raises after one hit season of C.S.I. might have exposed Nikki as the hero of the rich that she is… at least, as a writer.

Fuggedaboudit.

WEEKEND PREVIEW:  I have to admit it… talking vegetables scare me more than Hannibal Lecter.  So, I haven’t seen Jonah: A Veggie Tales Movie.  Sure, I’ll admit it… the cucumber bugs me more than the broccoli… does that make me a bad guy?  Or maybe it’s that the only version of Jonah and The Whale that I want to see is one about a religious man and a high-stakes gambler in Vegas… no vegetables.

So that leaves Red Dragon.  This one scares me a little too, because so many critics I respect seem to have seen something in this film that I simply didn’t see.  The phrase that kept popping into my head is "instantly forgettable."

Brett Ratner is becoming a better director with each film.  He has excellent taste in actors and has the basics down. But he is not a visionary.  Hannibal was a bad movie, but no one dresses up an old whore better than Ridley Scott.

Speaking of old whores… I am a man who loves Anthony Hopkins’ whoriest performances.  I love him in Magic.  I love him in A Change of Seasons.  I have no problem with Tony Hopkins chewing scenery like a termite in heat.  But in trying to make him look 20 years younger than he was in Hannibal, they have turned him into a drag queen without portfolio.  The thing that Ridley Scott understood… even if it didn’t quite hold together… was that to “do” Hannibal Lecter again, that he had to find another way in.  Scott chose opera.  Ratner wasn’t as daring.  He tried to recreate the look of Silence of the Lambs down to the last caged details… he left out the semen being thrown from other cages.  But I wasn’t buying Lecter here.  I always felt as though I was watching a Punch & Judy show, fully aware of the subtext that was supposed to draw me in, but never really impressed with the puppets.

Ratner carried a heavy burden from the past in other quarters as well.  The Michael Mann version is as dated as any 16-year-old film, but it is still brilliant.  And one of those brilliant conceits was that the good guy, Will Graham, was as crazy as the bad guys… finding sanity only in the bosom of his family… and even then, he was a little iffy.  This element of Graham’s character is alluded to, but it is not a part of Edward Norton’s performance.  Norton is too good an actor for this to be a mistake.  It is a choice.  But it’s not a choice I like as much as the original. 

Likewise, I never felt quite right about Ralph Fiennes as the Red Dragon.  Fiennes feels things deeply on screen.  But I never bought the schizophrenic break between rageful murderer and very gentle man.

Watching the film and thinking who I would prefer in these roles, it occurred to me that a simple switch between the two men would have worked brilliantly.  I always feel like there is more going in behind Fiennes’ sad eyes than he lets on and Norton is wonderful at pushing his characters from one extreme to another. 

Other choices that seemed good on the surface distracted the hell out of me.  Emily Watson can do anything… but it frustrates me to see her do nothing.  And her story with the Fiennes character is simply too simple to allow her to really develop her character on screen.  Like the girl in the pit in Silence of the Lambs (Brooke Smith), you can get a lot from a little with a good actress.  But Watson was in the picture a little too much to be just another piece of the puzzle, but not enough to make her character as important as it felt it should be.

And Harvey Keitel is totally as wasted in the Scott Glenn role.  Again, Glenn played a small role in Silence, but an, did he have an impact.  Keitel isn’t even given a Robert Duvall payday role here. 

There are some interesting elements.  I'd love to know why he made the movie all in pastels.  I never saw the pay off.  I’d like to know how Graham really felt about his family… but instead, another wasted performance (Mary-Louise Parker).  Besides getting laughs from entertainment press in the audience, was there any other benefit to the first ever performance by Phillip Seymour Hoffman that is completely forgettable.  (His body fat is more memorable than his un-intimate exit from the film.)

I’ll try to see the film again… maybe putting the work of other directors behind me will allow me to enjoy this film more… maybe not.

WEEKEND GUESSTIMATES

1. Red Dragon – 3356 venues – new - $46.5 million
2. Sweet Home Alabama – 3303 venues – off 38 percent -  $22.1 million
3. My Big Fat Greek Wedding  - 1971 venues – even - $9.4 million
4. The Tuxedo –3022 venues – off 45 percent - $8.3 million
5. Barbershop – 2176 venues – off 29 percent – $7.1 million
6. The Banger Sisters – 2530 venues – off 45 percent - $3 million
7. Jonah; A Veggie Tales Movie - 940 venues – new - $2.2 million
8. One Hour Photo – 1261 venues – off 38 percent - $1.9 million
9. The Four Feathers – 2187 venues – off 50 percent – $1.8 million
10. Signs – 1537 venues – off 40 percent - $1.4 million

READER OF THE DAY:  THE MAN/THE MEMBER writes:  “The fact that the DVD market is heavily influencing the movie industry should be no surprise when you consider this fact:

Cost of you and a date to go out to a movie on a Saturday Night to see a first run movie ONCE (not including transportation, popcorn, babysitting if needed etc.) ----- $22

Cost of buying a DVD you can watch as many times as you like ---- $22

If the trends continue, the DVD market could eventually exceed the movie market in profits and importance. Then we could see the lag time between movie and DVD shrink to a month or so, as movies are released only to promote DVD sales.

E ME:  A 5000 word column and you can’t find anything on your own that makes you want to write an e-mail in response?!?!?!